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Comment by jdhendrickson | Hacker News Reader

I've flirted with this method off and on, but the consensus between me and people I've spoken to who do the same, is a lack of retention comes along with the speed. You get the feeling of learning something and the pleasure associated with that, but none of it sticks. Of course this wont hold true across the board but something to factor in before adopting this method.

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I feel like I retain information more easily when listening to audio on 2x. Listening to audio is significantly slower than reading, and often by the time the speakers get to describing the results, a lot of time has passed from when they described the context. Shortening that time gap is helpful for retaining the information for me.

(Of course if you're playing the audio so quickly that you can't even make out some words, then I'd expect comprehension to go down)

I like to 2x and then use the extra time for reflection and review. I find that on 1x I zone out because I'm not engaging with the person speaking like I would face to face. On 2x, I have to pay attention or I'll miss something.

I find retention of audio at any speed is lousy.

This is why I'm a big fan of transcripts

Seconded. Audio for learning is like getting a fixed dataset in a linked list, and text/transcript is like getting it in a vector. There's zero benefit from the former, and by losing efficient random access, you can no longer skim/skip/search for things.

Me 2. That's why I hate lectures.

The professor should be able to give notes that people can use.

To be fair, this is very person-specific, and this distinction of preferred learning methods is a common topic in pedagogy. Some folks, myself included, are auditory learners, and will tend to retain more from a spoken lecture than a reading assignment. Some folks just can't retain audio as well as reading something, or need to take notes to retain (even if the notes are not consulted again).

This is why being a good teacher requires not just presenting the data in a good way for your learning modality of choice, but for all of them.

"Learning styles" has actually been debunked repeatedly.

The biggest problem is that the truly effective mechanisms for learning require very low student to teacher ratios and high engagement with and from the teacher over relatively short often repeated sessions (3 hour lectures, for example, do not qualify).

I'm pretty sure there are personal styles, which might be undiagnosed cognitive issues.

I probably have whatever "hearing dyslexia" is called. I seem to misunderstand a lot more words than the people around me. I'm the living version of that Benny Hill gag. Or Radner's SNL "violence on TV" skit.

Regardless, I either have to take notes or totally lock my attention onto the speaker (which most people find creepy) to retain much.

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